How To Get Followers On Google Plus

If you are a writer or other online business owner and haven’t joined Google+ yet I suggest you do. It is now open to everyone and no longer an invitation only site. I'm an early adopter and found it to be a great site for networking and increasing my website traffic. There is a huge potential for marketing.

When you post an article or other comment and hit the public button it can be seen by anyone on the internet interested in that subject not just your friends on Google+. Because Google owns this social networking site it also goes on their search feed increasing the number of people who see your work. That means more website traffic and a potential to increase Google pagerank.

Once you have joined Google your goal is to get as many followers as possible. More followers means a higher potential of readers or customers for your website.

How to get Google+ followers

It’s no guarantee that adding people will insure they add you but the more you have added and interacted with the higher the likelihood they will add you to their list of friends.

Find people you already know-

This probably sounds obvious but in the beginning this will be the easiest. Look for people you already have friended in other social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter and any others.

If you can’t find people you know ask them if they use a different name or if they are even a member of Google+.

Follow people your friends follow

Google plus makes it easy to gather large amounts of people to follow at once. Go into any member’s friend circles, highlight them all and hit the follow button.

Unlike Facebook, there is no penalty for adding people you don't already know. Most of us are grown ups and if we don't want to be someone's friend all we have to do is hit the "Ignore" button.

Look for people you admire

They may be celebrities, authors, website owners, entrepreneurs, journalists or other important people you enjoy reading.

Many people in technology and who have an online presence are already on Google Plus realizing it’s marketing potential.

Once you’ve added these people you can then look for people in their friend circles for like-minded individuals you might enjoy meeting.

At the top of your page is a box that says, “Search Google+,” this will bring up any status reports on that subject by all Google+ members that have added a public update.

For instance if you are interested in what people are saying about a certain politician, celebrity, television show, movie or book. You can even search for things like a breed of dog, cats or activities like gardening or jet skiing.

Read the comments and add people who have similar ideas. You can also add the person who left the post.

Read and leave insightful comments

I’ve gotten many followers by writing remarks that other people liked as well as clicking on the Plus One button of their comments. If you put in “+” and a person’s name before you leave a note, that person will get a notification that someone responded to their post. After a while some will decide to be your friend based upon your having ideas in common.

This is a great feature and can help if you want to only show pictures or posts to a certain group of people. You can name your circles anything you choose.

After you’ve gathered a collection of friends you can move them to relevant circles based on their occupation, interests, personalities, or just however you choose. You can even put people in more than one circle, for instance if a person is a writer but also into travel photography you could put them in both a Writer and a Photographer circle.

You don’t have to add everyone who adds you

You will only see news feeds from people you are following so if you no longer enjoy that person’s list you can unfollow them and you will no longer see their posts.

If someone adds you but you don’t have anything in common with them you can just hit the ignore button. They won’t get a nasty note from Google and they won't even know about it, so no harm done. Sometimes I get requests from people from another country and all of their posts are in another language I don’t speak. I don’t usually add them. If I can’t communicate with them or understand their updates it isn’t doing either of us any good.

If you don’t want to unfollow someone but don’t want to see their comments all of the time you can put them in a group of other people you don’t want to see. If for instance you only want to read posts from “People Worth Listening To” then those you’ve added to that friend group will only show in your feed. You can highlight more than one group at a time. You can have an “Annoying People” group and leave them out of your stream, this way you aren’t seeing their comments but they don’t know about it. This is good for Uncle Dave who thinks he’s funny but really isn’t.

Clicking on your stream shows all current posts from anyone sharing with you or anything that is a public update by your friends.

Posting updates that do not annoy people

One thing I’ve noticed, when you leave an update and only choose a particular circle it pops up in their notification box. If you are a writer and want as much publicity as possible then you should post all story updates as “Public.” This won’t show up in people’s notification box but will run in their normal “Stream” keeping people from deleting you from their friend’s list. Clogging up notification boxes tends to upset some and you don’t want that.

We want to keep as many readers as possible and not being annoying is the best way.

Add me on Google Plus

Feel free to add me, and any of my friends once you’ve started a page on Google+. You’ll be glad you joined and will increase blog traffic as well as your HubPages traffic.

Hashtags

This works similar to Twitter. If you post a story or any information using hashtags or pound signs "#" will help the Google search bots. When people put in a search for your subject they'll find your article in the list giving you more readers.

Comments

No HTML is allowed in comments, but URLs will be hyperlinked. Comments are not for promoting your articles or other sites.

sending

Raine Law Yuen 2 years agofrom Cape Town

Thanks for this really easy to read and useful hub. I am still trying to find my way around HP and social media. Have learnt a lot over the last two months and currently working on Google+ followers - so I will take up your offer for friendship. I have spent some time reading some of your hubs. Informative and I feel that I could relate to many of your topics.

Phyllis Doyle Burns 3 years agofrom High desert of Nevada.

Pamela, thanks for the great tips. I love Google+ and have been in that network a long time, but not very active. I need to pay more attention to sorting my groups, posting, etc. Great hub, voted Up ++

The Examiner-1 3 years ago

Pamela N Red,

This Hub was great! I may have to read it again but I already am a member of Google+. I use several other Google apps. For instance, I have AdSense here on HP.

I have to check in on Google+ more, I have been so busy with HP, Pinterest and my blog that I forgot about Google+. The video was funny(!) but I saw the serious side too. Thumbs up times five for this.

Kevin

Joan Veronica Robertson 4 years agofrom Concepcion, Chile

Hi there! Very informative and useful, very clearly written. Voted up, useful and interesting! Also shared. Have a good day!

Alastar, if you don't send them as a direct post it only shows up on the main feed. Some send to circles and then our notice board gets clogged up with extra stuff. I don't do that and send everything public. You get more views that way.

Alastar Packer 5 years agofrom North Carolina

Appreciate this Google+ info Pamela. The only thing about putting previously published articles out through public is the friends circles who may have already seen the piece or aren't interested. A few such yes, but too many may be considered rude or unwanted on their feeds.

Susan Holland 5 years agofrom Southwest Missouri

Great info, Pamela! I think I am doing it right on Google +, but I did not know you could use hash tags, too.

Pamela, thanks very much for this hub and the useful information. It's one more venue to add to the to-do list, but probably worth the time and effort as you indicate.

Author

Pamela N Red 5 years agofrom Oklahoma

Thanks for reading, Sandra. I like Google+, not much time there lately because I've been busy but I enjoy the people I've met there.

Molometer, I get new friends there everyday. It is different than the other social media sites I've used but still a great place to meet new people.

molometer 5 years ago

This is very useful advice Google + is a little weird to get your head around at first. But what an audience. Nice work sandrabusby for sharing this great hub byu Pamela.

Sandra Busby 5 years agofrom Tuscaloosa, Alabama, USA

OK, I'm going to find out about Google+. That will be your first tip for me. Thanks. Sandra Busby

Author

Pamela N Red 5 years agofrom Oklahoma

Billybuc, I've gained more readers from it and have noticed when using hashtags I find my articles come up twice instead of the usual once since they are posted on Google+.

Judi Bee, add me as a friend over there if you haven't already. I'm still figuring that one out and will probably write something about it later when I know what I'm doing.

Judith Hancock 5 years agofrom UK

See you over on Zurker then!

Bill Holland 5 years agofrom Olympia, WA

Very helpful Pamela, I'm about to give it a try thanks to your well-written hub.

Author

Pamela N Red 5 years agofrom Oklahoma

Judi Bee, I recently joined Red Gage and Zurker, there do seem to be too many of these. They help our online marketing so if we can devote a little time each week to them it makes a difference.

I'm thinking about having certain days for certain sites but haven't worked out a schedule yet. I may write a hub about that. :o)

Judith Hancock 5 years agofrom UK

I joined Google+ sometime ago, but lately have been ignoring it - there just aren't enough hours in the day!

Good hub, even the comments are useful!

Author

Pamela N Red 5 years agofrom Oklahoma

Thanks for reading, Happyboomernurse. I think you'll like it if you ever decide to sign up.

Author

Pamela N Red 5 years agofrom Oklahoma

Removing a circle or editing is a bit tricky. I had a hard time figuring that out myself. Go up to the top of your screen to your tool bar, (at the moment until they change things again) click on the circle icon. You'll have two scroll bars to the right. Scroll down the lower bar until you find the circle you want to delete. Right click on it and click delete.

They keep changing things so sometimes I have to go figure it out before helping someone else. I hope that works if not let me know.

Thanks for reading.

Gail Sobotkin 5 years agofrom South Carolina

Thanks for this information. You did a great job on this hub. I haven't joined Google+ and don't want to at present due to the management time required, but it's good to know what it's all about should I change my mind in the future.

Voted up and useful.

alipuckett 5 years ago

Great article! I have a G+ account, but only a few friends there, so it's always quiet every time I log in. One question I have: How do you remove a circle from your newsfeed?

Author

Pamela N Red 5 years agofrom Oklahoma

Allfeofdesign, it does take time to keep up with them all and now we have Pinterest to add to our repertoire. It is a full time job just managing them all.

Author

Pamela N Red 5 years agofrom Oklahoma

molometer, it takes time to figure out how it works but once you build up a list of friends you will notice an increase in your readership.

Laura, glad I could help. I've played with it since it's inception last summer and figured out how it works.

One2get2no, Google owns a great deal of the internet already so using this tool gives us a boost up in ratings.

Cebutouristspot, yes, Twitter and Facebook are also important tools we should all be using.

Jerry, I like Google+, it's different than Facebook or some of the other social networking sites but has a great potential for and increase in readers and eventually revenue.

Jainusmus and Cookingrecipes, thanks for reading.

Graham Gifford 5 years agofrom New Hamphire

This was helpful to me-thank you. I recently joined G+ and I have wanted to add more contacts and increase my traffic. I'm finding it difficult to manage all my social media sites. They seem to all require consistent attention for proper development. Thank you, again.

Mahaveer Sanglikar 5 years agofrom Pune, India

Thanks for this great information. I am already a member of Google Plus and enjoying it.

JerryJupiter 5 years agofrom United Kingdom

Great hub! I too am one of the early adopters and have a massive following by now. Thanks for sharing your thoughts!

cebutouristspot 5 years agofrom Cebu

Great hub. G+1 is part of the essential 3 and everybody who have an online business should join the other 2 is twitter and facebook :)

Philip Cooper 5 years agofrom Olney

Thank you for this very interesting hub. I joined Google + early on but I had no idea of the potential it had. Thanks for sharing.

Laura Matkin 5 years agofrom Laceys Spring, Alabama

I too wish I had read this 4 months ago when I started my Google+ account! I had no idea what I was doing! Great advice and Thank you Pamela N Red!

molometer 5 years ago

This was a clear and concise introduction to google + and I wish I read it 4 months ago! lol

I had such a headache with the circles 'full of celebs' and dull as anything.

Google+ is very interesting and in time I think it will come to dominate the webscape. Luckily we are in early.

Author

Pamela N Red 5 years agofrom Oklahoma

I'll try and find you on Google+, Sheila. I pop in two or three times a day there and post new work. Sometimes I post fun stuff but lately I've been pretty busy.

sheilanewton 5 years agofrom North Shields, UK

Great article. I'm on Google plus and it's rather a good way to get a decent following. Voted up.

Author

Pamela N Red 5 years agofrom Oklahoma

Danny, that seems to be the way things work. Someone creates a better site so everyone else tries to copy or do something better. It works out great for the rest of us. Thanks for reading.

Daniel Hodge 5 years agofrom Britain

Absolutely brilliant, and i loved the video at the end :')

Facebook are going to start 'copying' Google+'s ideas though; they already used the exact same picture viewer (with a popup, showing comments and likes on the right hand side).

Author

Pamela N Red 5 years agofrom Oklahoma

Thanks for reading, Missolive. I have quite a few followers there now.

It will be interesting to see what happens on Facebook. Thanks for reading, Kashmir.

Thomas Silvia 5 years agofrom Massachusetts

Hi Pamela, great interesting information in this hub, it will be interesting to see if any people leave Facebook when the new timeline becomes mandatory .

Vote up !!!

Author

Pamela N Red 5 years agofrom Oklahoma

Derdriu, thanks for the kind words.

Vinaya, following and communicating with other people there helps a great deal.

Catalystsnstars, it does take time, time we don't always have but it is a good way to get our work noticed. Facebook is best for people you already know while Twitter and Google+ help you expand and meet more people.

KrystalD, it's how many of us increase our readership which in turn brings in more revenue.

KrystalD 5 years agofrom Los Angeles

This was very useful. I use social networking mainly for friends and family. I have just starting using google+ but you opened my mind to new possiblities. Thanks!

catalystsnstars 5 years agofrom Land of Nod

I'm not too crazy about social networking sites, even at my age. It comes and goes with me actually, I do have a facebook but it's for random thoughts. This hub sheds some light on the possible financial advantage. I'll have to keep it in mind as I am trying to really use the internet to my advantage being a mother and a student without time to go into a 9-5.

You mentioned a huge potential for marketing, I'm going to focus on that.

Vinaya Ghimire 5 years agofrom Nepal

I do agree about the power of social media in marketing and getting traffic to our works. However, I have very few followers on social network and bookmarking sites. Thanks for sharing these useful tips.

Derdriu 5 years ago

Pamela N Red, What a helpful, practical, user-friendly summary of the fun in using Google Plus and the jump that Google Plus users may see in their following! In particular, you do a great job of listing 10 reasons for taking advantage of Google Plus and of describing each reason briefly, clearly, compellingly.

Thank you for sharing,

Derdriu

Author

Pamela N Red 5 years agofrom Oklahoma

Thanks for reading, Frank.

Frank Atanacio 5 years agofrom Shelton

thanks for this useful share Pamela N Red :) Frank

Author

Pamela N Red 5 years agofrom Oklahoma

Glenn, they know all of that stuff whether we use Google+ or not. I use Cox email for personal and GoDaddy for my business. They get information out of my Cox account all of the time as well as LinkedIn.

Facebook is getting worse too.

I like Google+ better than Facebook, more professional and a different group of people. It's not for everyone but is growing in popularity.

Glenn Stok 5 years agofrom Long Island, NY

I’m hesitant to join Google+. For one thing, it's another social group. How many social groups can one person belong to and still keep up with it all. That's my primary reason for not having joined Google+ yet. The other reason is that Google connects all the dots and know more about you than you may know yourself. Such as connections between all your friends and what your friends talk about via private email (if using gmail) as well as the things they search for. That can relate back to you as well. And if you follow people your friend follow, that can come back to haunt you if one of those people (several removed from your close friends) happens to be someone who is into bad things.

I love Google for what it's worth. I even found that Google Authorship has helped increase my Google pagerank. That much I have done. But I'm not sure about Google+.

I'm not a fan of following people just to have them follow you back. These are not the people who will read your articles. I only follow people if I truly want to see what they publish. And I am happy enough for followers who follow me because they truly want to see what I publish, and not because I followed them.

The many other things you mention are very encouraging and I may decide to join Google+ someday. I do have to agree there is a lot to gain from it. It’s just scary how much privacy we give away in return.

Author

Pamela N Red 5 years agofrom Oklahoma

Randomcreative, there are many ways we can advertise our work and this is another great one to add.

Rose Clearfield 5 years agofrom Milwaukee, Wisconsin

As some other people have commented, I haven't signed up for Google+ yet because I haven't found a way to balance it with other social media. At some point, I probably will, though, especially as it becomes a larger site. Thanks for the great tips!

Author

Pamela N Red 5 years agofrom Oklahoma

Aisha, I noticed an increase in my traffic after joining.

Angela, it's slowly building momentum with more followers.

Angela Blair 5 years agofrom Central Texas

Great advice and I'm going to follow it now that I have more information. Have been on the site for a few months but really not paid much attention to it -- thanks for the head's up! Enjoyed the Hub immensely. Best, Sis

Rasna Aisha 5 years agofrom Manila, Philippines

Hello thanks for your info, I will try all your tips,although I joined google+ not long ago but I dont really use it.

Author

Pamela N Red 5 years agofrom Oklahoma

Jobister, I try to manage my time between the two. Lately I spend more time on Google+ than I do on Facebook. I have different friends on each one and a few friends that are on both. It's a great advertising tool.

Thanks, Sabran, I hope you found it useful.

Thoughtforce, I'm still learning and they add new things to the site. I'll be curious to see how many people move to Google+ after this timeline is mandatory on Facebook.

Christina Lornemark 5 years agofrom Sweden

I have started at google+ and there are many things I like. The circles and the possibility to choose what I want to see from others are a great thing. Thanks for the great tips about adding more circles and put people in groups after more interesting and so on. There are many opportunities, maybe put people in groups by niche! Thanks for the useful information!

Tina

sabrani44 5 years ago

Great hub! Thanks for all this info :)

jobister 5 years agofrom Anaheim, California

Problem with Google+ is that people don't want to have Facebook & Google+. Too much to manage & keep up with especially once you amass a large group of friends or followers. Google+ has cool features it just needs more exposure.